“It’s not your baby!” when you’re talking to a dog or maybe “It’s not your dog!” when you’re talking to a young child – there’s a pretty significant bet that you’ve heard either one (or perhaps even both). But despite some people’s convictions that you shouldn’t talk to your baby and your dog in the same manner, one cannot help but wonder whether childspeech and petspeech really are that different.
Anyone on social media has undoubtedly concluded that the covid-19 pandemic resulted in two societal booms: a babyboom and a petboom. The rise in the adoption of pets helped their new owners feel a little less bored at home during lockdown, and the rise of babies… well, you can figure that one out yourself.
In any case, if you’ve heard the proud owner of a new pet talk, you might have noticed that the speech doesn’t seem totally different from that of your cousin who just had a baby. Higher pitch, diminutives, shorter utterances – childspeech and petspeech seem quite similar. It raises the question: do we really talk the same to pets as we do to little children?
What is childspeech?
The scientific term for childspeech is CDS (Child Directed Speech), although it’s also known as motherese, parentese, or baby talk. Research from several scholars has revealed that CDS has a few consistent characteristics. Firstly, speakers tend to exaggerate their emotions when they talk to a kid. They usually try extra hard to sound super angry, super happy, or super sad. Intonation is also often exaggerated. It means that syllables are emphasised and that the difference between higher and lower notes are clearer. This could be particularly heard in questions, which generally tend to end in even higher notes than other utterances. In fact, it would be even higher, because our tone in general seems to be higher when we talk to kids, compared to when we talk to adults. Another feature is that vowels are hyperarticulated. Childspeech becomes specifically child-speech.
Lastly, utterances in general are shorter and are repeated more often. Instead of asking a kid “Would you maybe like to eat some cookies as a snack?”, the same question would be asked in more, and more, and more, repetitive parts: “Do you want cookies? Eat cookies? Do you want cookies? Yes? Cookies?”
Talking in childspeech usually occurs intuitively. Without realising it, we notice that younger kids pay better attention and listen more when they are talked to using the features above. They seem to care less about adultspeech.
And what’s petspeech?
Petspeech can be found in scientific articles as PDS (Pet Directed Speech). Multiple experiments and researches by Burnham have shown that pets too react better to their “own” language than they do to adultspeech. Just like childspeech, petspeech can be described as an intuitive language that speakers don’t always seem to be aware of. It’s most characterised by a higher tone of voice and shorter utterances. Sounds familiar?
Dogs vs cats
Are you a dogperson or a catperson? The question might seem completely irrelevant, however, research by De Mouzon, Gonthier and Leboucher argues that the way of talking to dogs doesn’t always match the way of talking to cats.
Research about dogspeech conducted by Alex Benjamin and Katie Slocombe concluded that, when we talk to dogs, we change our tones more often – so we automatically exaggerate our intonation. We also exaggerate the emotions in our voices.
What’s also important to dogs is that when we talk to them, we actually say something, says research by Anna Gergely. Gibberish that might entertain babies will not catch or keep the attention of dogs. Instead, we should really say something with meaning (and then probably preferably “Do you wanna go out?” or “Would you like food?”).
Alternatively, when we talk to cats, we talk just a little differently. We hyperarticulate our vowels again, to make sure our words are clearly audible. We also repeat ourselves more.
Additionally, cats also seem to care greatly that something is being communicated – so no small talk, please! Even more important than what is being communicated, however, is who is communicating something. In fact, cats seem to listen better to one person than to the other. So don’t worry – the fact that your best friend’s cat still doesn’t listen to you has nothing (well, not everything) to do with you.
So: do we talk the same to pets as to children?
CDS, PDS, childspeech or petspeech: you’re not imagining things, they truly are alike. Both children and pets are talked to using a higher tone and shorter utterances.
Even though we don’t talk exactly the same to dogs as we do to cats, both dogspeech and catspeech bear similarities to childspeech. As previously mentioned, we exaggerate our intonation and emotion when talking to dogs and/or children, and we hyperarticulate vowels and repeat utterances when we talk to cats and/or children.
So whether you talk childspeech or petspeech to your dad’s dog, your best friend’s cat, or your grandniece: it secretly doesn’t really matter.
Sources
Benjamin, A., & Slocombe, K. (2018). ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech. Animal Cognition, 21 (3), 353-364.
Burnham, D., Kitamura, C., & Vollmer-Conna, U. (2002). What’s New, Pussycat? On Talking to Babies and Animals. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 296 (5572), 1435.
De Mouzon, C., Gonthier, M., & Leboucher, G. (2002). Discrimination of cat-directed speech from human-directed speech in a population of indoor companion cats (Felis catus). Animal Cognition.
Gergely, A., Farago, T., Galambos, A., & Topal, J. (2017). Differential effects of speech situations on mothers’ and fathers’ infant-directed and dog-directed speech: An acoustic analysis. Scientific Reports, 7 (1), 13739-10.
Zu, N., Burnham, D., Kitamura, C., & Vollmer-Conna, U. (2013). Vowel Hyperarticulation in Parrot-, Dog- and Infant-Directed Speech. Anthorzoös, 26 (3), 373-380.
– Rosalie
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